Deprecated: mb_convert_encoding(): Handling HTML entities via mbstring is deprecated; use htmlspecialchars, htmlentities, or mb_encode_numericentity/mb_decode_numericentity instead in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/super-cool-ad-inserter/inc/scaip-shortcode-inserter.php on line 37
Try to influence the G-20’s agenda … or just kick it out of town? Local activists are united in opposing the international summit of top financial powers here Sept. 24-25, but at their first mass gathering they were still divided over goals and tactics. At the June 27 organizing meeting of dozens of activist groups, some were already announcing protest events.
The meeting was sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, a local peace and social-justice organization whose Anti-War Committee hopes to hold a major permitted march on Sept. 25. The Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project, a collective of local anarchists and anti-authoritarians, is scheduling its own march for 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 24.
Protests are also being slated for the days leading up to the summit. National protest organizer David Meieran proposed a Mobilization for Climate Justice to coincide with G-20 and a coal conference coming Downtown Sept. 20-23. He hopes such a “sustainability encampment … would model the change we want to see” in the world, from the use of bicycle transportation to using local, sustainable agriculture.
Merton board member Wanda Guthrie announced that Sept. 21 is tentatively set for a march of spiritual groups. “We’d like to call the G-20 to account for what they say and what they really do,” she said. “We’d also like to emphasize the separation of corporation and state.”
The G-20 summit will be held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, but since activists expect heavy security at the site, demonstrations may be held across the Allegheny River. The North Shore “may be the only place that the G-20 folks can see one of us,” noted Barney Oursler of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee. “We may be across the river, waving.”
Resistance Project members have already begun building visibility for their cause. Members are going door-to-door with a pamphlet that contends the G-20 free-trade policies “require countries to open their markets to cheap imports,” even as “local economies are steamrolled.” The pamphlet also complains that when poorer countries need loans from the International Monetary Fund, they’re often burdened by IMF rules that pull money from education and other social services in favor of things like road improvements. Such priorities benefit multinational corporations — and thus G-20 countries — more than locals, the Resistance says.
The Merton meeting included representatives of the ACLU and state Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Highland Park). Mikhail Pappas, policy and projects liaison in Ferlo’s Pittsburgh office, said the senator will be the activists’ “champion inside the government.” Ferlo is “willing to attempt to create” negotiations with law enforcement to set ground rules — something more traditional protest groups may desire. ACLU reps also announced legal observers and lawyers would be on hand for the event.
Marie Skoczylas of Pittsburgh Organizing Group, which has been leading local anti-war and other protests for years, announced tactical training sessions throughout the summer on everything from “Participating in a Mass Action 101” to the use of lockdown devices. The devices prevent or delay law enforcement attempts to move activists from a protest site.
“We will contest the G-20,” asserted Harvey Holtz, an Indiana University of Pennsylvania professor helping to moderate the meeting. “In Seattle, they took down the meetings,” he added, referring to the 1999 World Trade Organization summit that mass protests disrupted. “Can we do that here? If not, what do we do?”
In contrast, Casey Capitolo, who hopes to put a Pittsburgh labor-history display at the Merton Center in September, suggested “dialing down the combat against the G-20. They’re the people who make war. We need to make peace and not divert energy” from vocally countering G-20 policies.
Several members of the Resistance Project advocated a different tack. “I’m not interested in negotiating with the G-20. I think that’s pointless,” said Alex Bradley, of POG. “So my goal is to disrupt the summit through a diversity of tactics.”
Many at the meeting suggested trying to rally more Pittsburghers to protest G-20, or at least understand activists’ grievances. Capitolo concluded that activists need “to interface with people, the people who are not here, the people who are not us … the people who would normally be put off by everything we’re doing.”
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.
Great story, Marty. Is this an activist clan gathering or a dysfunctional family? You outlined how close and far we are at the same time. Thanks.
just another reason for the under acheivers to entertain themselves with another jack-ass-o’rama…
i can respect the right to protest, but not the right to be an ass…let the meeting go on without notice. the bigger issue you non-showering-hippies make of this, the less the mainstream people will sympathize with your “cause”. half of the protest ‘tards have no idea why you are protesting or what would truly make you get a real job and become productive anyway.
stay home with your family that day instead.
“let the meeting go on without notice”
…so that we can continue to slave away our lives for the nothingness in work, boredom, pain, war, death, and continue to live life with no real hope for a future. we fight the G-20 so we can have a world without bullshit reality..
nah dun. i’ma cop me a brick and launch it, because this world is whack, and i’m tearing it down and building the future that i want to live in. i’m fighting for every Michael Ellerbe, every Oscar Grant – the police have killed, I’m fighting so one day i won’t have to. I want a future that I have a role in determining, not some rich assholes who really don’t give a fuck about me, my friends, or what we have to do to survive.
what are you talking about mainstream people? as if i’m not a yinzer who works like everyone else. i do shower, i do listen to hip hop, i do skate, i do drink, i do fuck. i also want a world where i can get up everyday and not have to deal with the pain of working, paying bills, worrying about health insurance, and if i’m gonna get blown up by some other country, because some fools in power got a hard on and attacked them.
Purvis, you are obviously the one who does not know what we are protesting since you think it is an excuse for a “jack-ass-o-rama” as you eloquently put it. Luckily for you there is literature available on what the g20 is currently doing to stomp on your life and well being. Plenty of us also have jobs which we work and then do activism on top of, making us much harder workers than you give us credit for- obviously harder workers than those who believe that if you are doing one thing, you can’t possibly have a job as well.
And perhaps it’s not us making a big issue that is the problem, but people like you struggling in the same ways we are going against us because you are actually believing what the media and government tells you about the g20 while they take your money and give it to banks, rape your planet, and send your family and friends to fight their wars. Divide and conquer- a good way for the state to keep everyone stupid and cooperating while they get rich off of your suffering. Yes, YOUR suffering.
Some people can’t stay home with their families because they are too busy working or dying in wars because of the actions of the g20. If you would like to ignore that, that is your problem.
You can keep eating s*it if you like. We’ll fight for you anyways.
The truth here is that these radicals that protest the G20 are some of the biggest conformists out there. Because of a blind dissatisfaction with whats around them and a lack of knowledge about the inner workings of world money markets, govt, and the applicable forces involved, these people align themselves with forces and ideas ever more radical and incompetent so as to compensate for their inherent lack of knowledge.
A reason for this could be that those that have this real knowledge and accept this world to be beautiful yet quite flawed, often edge away from radicalism because it becomes so clear that it has never made a single worthwhile dent in any cause rooted an inch deep in reality.
The “foot soldiers” of groups like “POG” or the incompetent “sailors” aboard Whale Wars’ Sea Shepherd, fail to question their leaders once aligned with these ideas, and are unknowingly pawns in a money game with no winner except the media whores and grandstanders that serve as the figureheads of these organizations.
Sad? Nah, not really. Their ignorance is exactly the tool that law enforcement agencies rely on. Because the dangerous ones out there are educated govt types with experience in reality. Not a disenchanted barista serving ME a triple espresso and commenting that I should buy a Prius and attend the anti G20 rally.
Do any of them, the ones that attach themselves to websites that promote anarchism, marxism, etc…ever wonder why all of those oppressed people yearned for Democracy and order?
Throw your bricks if you must, misguided ones. The educated, position holding policy makers simply find you to be an inconvenience. The federal and state agencies offering the enforcement of law find you to be serious enough to qualify as a threat, and will uphold our laws even for you.
In the end, you will have disrupted nothing, and you will talk for years about the time you bought that paint at Wal-Mart and painted some nasty signs for the President decrying big business and globilization.
You will all buy new computers at Best Buy to keep up with your blogging.
You will buy new mountain bikes from China to commune with nature.
You will have done nothing worthwhile, and been part of nothing. And you will not even realize it.
Res Ipsa Loquitor
Ha, funny you bring up Sea Shepherd negatively given that they have one of the most successful anti-whaling campaigns in the world.
Either way, I am proud to be a radical. I am a radical extremist when it comes to rape, senseless murder, and child abuse- being against it all of the time and at all costs. I am also a radical extremist when it comes to the government doing these things to the people and the planet- I am against it all of the time.
So, if you would like to accept the flaws as they are and do nothing simply because they exist, that’s your problem.
YailBloor:”…those that have this real knowledge… often edge away from radicalism because it becomes so clear that it has never made a single worthwhile dent in any cause rooted an inch deep in reality.”
Really? Underground railroad? Suffragists? Martin Luther King Jr? Gandhi? These people were arrested all of the time as radical activists and menaces- unable to “accept the world” as it is.
With your logic, we’d still own slaves, I would be owned by a man, and so on. I’ll take my chances as a radical. Thanks for the compliment.
Lets be realistic about somethings. You are not Ghandi, martin luther king, a suffragist or even Paul Watson. (though to be mentioning watson in that company is terrible)
You are insulated in a “culture” that is disguised as a movement. My aim is not to make this personal though.
As a marine environmental scientist by profession, an avid outdoorsman, lover of people and animals, and thinker, I submit an educated question to those supporters of people like Mr. Watson and the Sea Shepherd:
When he collides with a vessel and one of them goes down, what is one of the (aside from loss of life) consequences?
I’ll tell you: Those vessels carry hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel oil and various other chemicals. When a vessel goes down, a spill occurs. And it will occur where no possible oil recovery operation can occur, and it will do exponentially more harm to one of the most sensitive and dying ecosystems on our planet.
All in the name of misguided, ignorant fanaticism.
The likely result of the glorious Sea Shepherds actions are going to be DE-REGULATED whaling in Japans territorial waters. They will take less whales, marginally less, but the entire operation will be untouchable. If the Sea Shepherd enters those waters to try to stop them, they can and will, and should be met with force. Not to mention it will wipe out the population in a small area.
If this is a concern of yours, this whaling…get an environmental law degree and do something about it.
I commend those out there that fight for injustice, against greed, for the environment, and for mankind, by means of intelligent, moderate, lawful and realistic forward thinking methods. I AM one of them.
“i also want a world where i can get up everyday and not have to deal with the pain of working, paying bills, worrying about health insurance,”
Typical lazy hippie pot-head communist wanna-be. You stupid punks have the same foolish pipe dreams that your dirty, STD infested, drugged out hippie parents thought were so great, until the food and sex and drugs ran out and they got JOBS. How many washed up hippies from the ’60’s are still living the dirt-ball life?
Yailbloor, it seems to me that you are getting your information from anti-enviro propaganda sources and not what Paul Watson and his ship actually does. They do not collide with vessels and their actions strictly involve damage to the whaling boats not to the lives of people on them. They even offered to help the whalers seek out a lost person who fell from a ship once even though they knew he was already dead.
They throw stink bombs at ships to make their whale meat unusable but do not harm life. The ships seek out and kill an endangered species for taste buds while shooting live rounds and throwing grenades at the sea shepherd ship. Who is in the wrong here?
As for an environmental law degree, the law is doing a great job for the anti-whaling efforts isn’t it? Being that it is illegal to kill endangered species, they’re still doing it. Woohoo for the law!
While some with law degrees have good intentions, the upper tiers of the state do not. Profits will always come before people, other animals, and the planet with laws and while some may seem to do good, there will always be a loophole (like the one the Japanese whalers are using) where profits and corporations will rule. That is why people have to take matters into their own hands.
I don’t understand why those doing “lawful” activism always bash that which is “unlawful” considering that “unlawful” acivism has played a huge part in all movements. Whether or not I alone am Gandhi or MLK or a black panther or whatever, people like you, using your logic back then, would have called their activism WRONG. People using your logic back then were the same acting if they were somehow better and more effective with their “lawful activism”.
The truth is, all of it has a place and the sooner people can respect ALL facets of activism rather than demonizing other activists as “good” or “bad”, the sooner things will get done. The opposition works on divide and conquer and by falling for their bull you actually divide the movement. Let’s work together rather than against each other. Both techniques have been proven to work- illegal and legal. To deny this is to deny history.
Actually I am getting my information from most of the Pro-enviro community that understands barely a snipet of reality comes from the Animal Planet or conversation at poetry jam sessions and the like.
You are so completely unorganized and unrealistic I wont attempt to embarrass you further by trying to illustrate how the real world actually works. Instead, I will point you towards a couple of resources that you will no doubt completely not look at. Notheless, In about three hours, I will be attending another workshop for marine environmental pollution in regards to environmentally sensitive areas, and have little time to devote to someone who is so clearly and ignorantly out-gunned that they can barely see we have similar goals.
The only difference is that I accept the unpleasant tasks instead of bitching about the issues and not accepting facts.
maritimelaw.com
http://www.state.gov/g/oes/
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1217
Also, there is great research to be done by searching for 33CFR, which governs environmental regulations.
No doubt, unless you are truly mentally ill, you despised the acts of 9/11 and everything that went with it.
I will leave you with this quote:
“We are a violent species, and we always solve our problems with violence. There have been no exceptions. Nonviolent victories are a myth. Force has always prevailed…One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”
—Paul Watson
Personal insults are always the best way to show you can’t address someone’s argument, Yailbloor. You have fun at your workshop. Hopefully it helps things.
Oh and one last thing, since we are tossing quotes around:
“Gandhi remained committed to nonviolence; I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone.” -Nelson Mandela
“Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor …” -Gandhi
I didn’t post these to condone 9/11 btw which you will surely try to spin my comments as. But, since this all started on a thread about g20 activism, you should look into the government’s actions before, during, and after 9/11 to find the answers to your issues.
wow,
animalia libero- did you go to a public school? did you play on a public playground? who the F^ck paid for this? your mama and dada? we all paid for it via our taxes…have the police, the fire or medics ever come to your house? who paid for that? did you ride your little skateboard to the coffeehouse for work in december? who plowed the street? this is just a little local goverment infrastructure lesson…want government healthcare? who gonna pay for it? is you grandfather, the wealthy surgeon, who has been supporting your hippie dad who passed his dirty genes on to you gonna work for free?
yodun- you stated “i do fuck. i also want a world where i can get up everyday and not have to deal with the pain of working, paying bills…” please practice safe sex and PLEASE do not pro-create…the world is filthy enough without your tainted seed.
Dude, if you find a way that i won’t have to work and pay bills f^cking call me…i’ll take two. Your lazy and want an excuse for it. get a better job and live like the rest of us…